ASAPbio Awarded $1 Million for Next-Generation Life Sciences Preprint Infrastructure

ASAPbio, a biologist-driven project to promote the productive use of preprints in the life sciences, has received a $1 million, 18-month grant from The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust to develop a new service to aggregate life sciences preprints and promote their reuse.

Preprints are complete scientific documents posted online and made freely available to the global scientific community. They are frequently the same version of a paper that is submitted to a journal for peer review. Preprints are widely used in physics, mathematics, and computer science, but are still a new (albeit rapidly-growing) communication system in the life sciences. Mainstream adoption of preprints is challenged by the current difficulty of finding these documents across several unconnected servers; the lack of community governance over the standards that define a preprint; and technological barriers to accessing content for reuse.

The Helmsley award provides funds for ASAPbio to address these problems by constructing a community-governed service that will aggregate, preserve, and deliver life sciences preprints to human and machine readers. It will also develop open-source tools for manuscript screening and conversion to formats such as XML. The guiding principles of this service have been defined by a consortium of funders, including the Helmsley Charitable Trust. ASAPbio has issued an RFA to identify potential suppliers.

“The grant from the Helmsley Charitable Trust is a giant step forward for the life science community to translate ideas for next-generation preprint services into a reality. This coming summer, we anticipate that other funders will follow the lead of Helmsley and provide further multi-year support for building the technologies for a powerful preprint knowledge repository that facilitates scientific progress through open sharing of data,” says Ron Vale, Founder of ASAPbio. “The support of major funding agencies and the development of new tools for discovering recent scientific findings should encourage life scientists to share their scientific manuscripts in the form of preprints.”

ASAPbio’s work focuses on convening stakeholders for discussions about the role of preprints in the life sciences (namely, an initial conference at HHMI in February of 2016 – see report in Science – and follow-up workshops for funders, technical experts, and scientific societies). Via these meetings, online discussions, and a network of local representatives, ASAPbio seeks to promote the cultural change necessary to complement new developments in technology and policy, from funders, universities, and journals.

ASAPbio is additionally supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, and the Simons Foundation. ASAPbio is incorporated as a nonprofit California corporation.